showing deliberate determination to behave in a way that most people think is wrong, unacceptable, or unreasonable a perverse decision (= one that most people do not expect and think is wrong) She finds a perverse pleasure in upsetting her parents. Do you really mean that or are you just being deliberately perverse? For some perverse reason he is refusing to see a doctor. It would be perverse to quit now that we're almost finished.
adverb She seemed perversely proud of her criminal record. He couldn't bear to be near her, yet, perversely, he still found himself looking for her.
NAmE//pərˈvərsət̮i//
noun [uncountable] He refused to attend out of sheer perversity.See perverse in the Oxford Advanced Learner's DictionaryCheck pronunciation: perverse